Special Issue Guest Editor Guidelines
The Journal of Computational and Cognitive Engineering (JCCE) publishes targeted Special Issues (SIs) focusing on emerging fields or critical developments within the computational and cognitive realms. Guest Editors lead this expansion, and these guidelines map their formal structural parameters.
1. Role and Responsibilities of Guest Editors
Guest Editors (GEs) play a critical role in ensuring the academic quality and successful developmental milestones of Special Issues. Their primary responsibilities include:
- Defining the Special Issue Topic: Propose a clear, concise, and well-defined SI topic framework and articulate its exact scientific relevance and significance to the research community.
- Author Identification and Outreach: Identify key global potential contributors and collaborate seamlessly with the journal editorial office to invite high-quality submissions and promote the Special Issue call.
- Timeline Management: Establish and rigorously manage a clear operational timeline for manuscript submission, review processing iterations, and final revisions to ensure timely publication.
- Editorial Coordination: Work closely with the Editor-in-Chief (EiC) and managing staff to address complex author queries and ensure that the Special Issue track aligns firmly with the journal's scope and standards.
- Content Curation: Overlook the complete index layout of accepted manuscripts and prepare a comprehensive Guest Editorial piece introduction for the Special Issue binder.
- Promotion and Dissemination: Actively broadcast and promote the Special Issue through global academic networks, conferences, professional engineering communities, and institutional platforms.
2. Ethical Responsibilities
Guest Editors must unconditionally uphold the journal's core Publishing Policies, structural licensing frameworks, and COPE Committee standards. Click panels below to review critical ethical specifications:
Guest Editors are entirely responsible for ensuring that the peer review process is conducted in an completely fair, impartial, and transparent manner.
- Select external anonymous peer reviewers possessing appropriate subject matter expertise.
- Rigorously screen chosen reviewers for any actual, potential, or hidden conflicts of interest (COIs).
- Ensure that all reviews, scores, and track changes are routed exclusively through the journal’s official online submission system.
- Maintain a highly timely, objective, and transparent peer review evaluation loop.
Guest Editors must fully disclose any actual or potential conflicts of interest before accepting the official journal board appointment.
- Any new COIs that arise during the ongoing editorial process must be reported to the publisher immediately upon identification.
- Guest Editors must strictly recuse themselves from handling or deciding upon manuscripts authored or co-authored by family members, institutional colleagues, or entities with financial or close academic relationships.
Guest Editors must guarantee that all manuscripts are evaluated solely and metrics-wise on their abstract academic and scientific merit.
- Editorial recommendations must never be influenced by the authors' nationality, institutional affiliation, gender profile, or personal background.
- Guest Editors must absolutely never request or manipulate authors to include irrelevant citations intended to artificially inflate citation counts for themselves, the journal, or affiliated researchers.
- Manuscripts must contain fully documented original research and comply with the journal's publication ethics policies and standards.
3. Guest Editor Appointment and Eligibility
The formal assignment of Guest Editors remains strictly subject to approval by the JCCE Editorial Board and publisher. Guest Editors must satisfy the following baseline criteria:
- Demonstrate recognized global expertise and citation impact in the relevant research field.
- Hold an accredited, verifiable academic or research affiliation.
- Possess a strong, verified publication record in high-tier peer-reviewed international journals.
- Have no unresolved ethical violations, past duplicate submissions, or infractions related to academic publishing.
4. Publisher Support and System Access
Guest Editors will receive complete end-to-end support from the journal's central editorial office throughout the Special Issue processing pipeline. Support infrastructure includes:
- Unrestricted secure system access to monitor manuscript submissions, reviewer assignments, and review progress in real-time.
- Editorial office assistance with pre-screening processing, technical structural checks, and reviewer invitation dispatches.
- Continuous guidance on publication licenses, copyright laws, and COPE ethical standards compliance.
- Full copyediting, typesetting, DOI linking, and electronic production support once manuscripts are formally accepted.
5. Submitting a Special Issue Proposal
Prospective Guest Editors who wish to propose a new Special Issue theme track are encouraged to submit a detailed formal prospectus through our automated system framework.
Submit a Special Issue Proposal